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It is still a battle of reasoning, and she is extremely intelligent. She had more of a chance than Battler ever did in the first 4 games.

What's the point of reasoning if you have no control over the information you're handling? What's the point of being extremely intelligent if you can't realize you're being deceived by literally everyone else? Erika's intelligence and cleverness is mostly demonstrated in how she can weave ingenius, and incredibly sick plans to trap her opponents and humiliate them with things she's prepared several turns in advance, but you're arguing against her ability to do that.

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Her perspectives weren't that unreliable. Her Piece should have access to the Mystery side of the story, and she can watch the Fantasy side from the Meta World. All of this will give her many vital clues with which to begin reasoning.

The idea that Renall is speaking against wasd that Erika did not have access to her Piece's information. Keep up.

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Even though the cat box hadn't been opened, she decided for herself that her perspective must be THE single, objective truth. Nobody ever deceived her into believing something like that. Certainly, on the Mystery side, her Piece's perspective is supposed to be very close to the truth of the current game. You can't use Fantasy to trick that perspective. However, it isn't quite at the level of Red Truth. And nobody ever said it was.

Wow, you are not even close to responding to what Renall is talking about at all.

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Maybe it is like in EP8 with Ange? Where she could just "enter" the body of her piece, but when she didn't want to, she could just let the piece take over... and now i wonder who "controls" this piece's personality when the player is not the one controlling it....

By necessity, the Gamemaster.

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What if Bern/Meta-Erika saw the whole game through the eyes of Piece-Erika? Also the parlor scene may have been presented longer, but skipped for Meta-Battler, because it was not really necessary for Battler to see it? Hmm I am not sure about this.

Then we loop back around to the very beginning of the discussion. Why in the hell didn't Bern or Erika comment about Kanon not being visible? Why didn't they find the Shannon/Kanon thing even slightly odd, except to preserve Ryukishi's shitty twist?

What's the point of reasoning if you have no control over the information you're handling? What's the point of being extremely intelligent if you can't realize you're being deceived by literally everyone else? Erika's intelligence and cleverness is mostly demonstrated in how she can weave ingenius, and incredibly sick plans to trap her opponents and humiliate them with things she's prepared several turns in advance, but you're arguing against her ability to do that.

The idea that Renall is speaking against wasd that Erika did not have access to her Piece's information. Keep up.

Wow, you are not even close to responding to what Renall is talking about at all.

The idea that Erika did not have access to her Piece's information, has nothing to do with my theory. This is because, in my theory, she does have access to her Piece's information. I had mistakenly assumed that he was talking to me, so I tried to respond.

But you're effectively saying she is, because she doesn't have any of the capabilities she was told she has, under your theory. How the hell would Erika not notice and complain? You're trying to bandaid a huge plothole but what you're proposing doesn't make any sense.

What Featherine meant about ripping the guts out of a cat isn't solely about finding the truth. Its disecting every part of the story and pulling out its nasties. The regret that that comes from this is that you find out that the stories aren't really well written or though out right. And boy does Umineko have a whole lot of filthy guts

But you're effectively saying she is, because she doesn't have any of the capabilities she was told she has, under your theory. How the hell would Erika not notice and complain? You're trying to bandaid a huge plothole but what you're proposing doesn't make any sense.

You guys seem to think that just because the answer is not spoon-fed, reasoning is impossible. Therefore, Erika, whose perspective does not reach the level of Red Truth (even though it actually is still reliable), is obviously being tricked. She is not capable of fighting in a fair game against a witch. The witches are just cruelly taunting her, for no other reason than to alleviate their boredom.

That is not necessarily true. In fact, I believe it is largely wrong.

Humans were never told that their truths are correct. Does that mean they are being cruelly tricked? No. They can go around and experience the world with their senses, and decide what is the truth for themselves. Even so, their senses are not at the level of Red Truth.

That is how it is with Erika's Piece in the Mystery side of the story, according to my theory.

In the end, what we are all looking for in this story is "an answer we can be satisfied with." Whether Ryukishi gives us this answer or not, it doesn't change that this is our objective. And it doesn't change the fact that we are capable of reaching this objective. I believe I will reach that objective, myself. Do you?

I don't get why Erika can't make the mistake of not making sure behind her there's really Shannon and Kumasawa and Kanon is really where Battler says he was.

Despite being intelligent she overlooked checking things more than once in Umineko so missing to check is an error she's prone to do.

We're never told Erika saw Kanon and Shannon together in the parlour, we're told that Battler saw them, first one and after the other but in such a short amount of time it's hard to think Yasuda managed to switch from one to the other, realistically speaking (Umineko sometimes could care less about realism, though, but I don't think that speedchanging Yasuda is the trick here). In order to see them Battler had to move his gaze around the room, while Erika was in front of him, likely looking at him.

From Erika's perspective she likely in that moment saw Battler, George and Jessica... and possibly who were behind them or close to them. If there were people close or behind them.
She had to play the polite and proper guest, it's rude to costantly look around, expecially when talking with someone else. Lambda took advantage of this to trick everyone (Bern, Erika, Battler) about everyone being present.

It fits with Erika's character (she doesn't always check thingseven when it could turn important later) without touching Erika's abilities (she cannot be shown falsehood).

It's nothing else but the same trick used to have her believe that the cousins were dead or that Kanon was in the room.
In both cases, if she had checked, she wouldn't have been tricked.

Okay, so the gold bars used in Umineko can't be that big as they weight only 10 kg and a gold bar isn't a perfect parallelepiped so measurement is approximative but still... it doesn't look like the huge mountain of gold we see in Umineko, though the gold bar would be 1000.

Though maybe it's an optical illusion. The wall showed in the PSP version seems huge but the ingots might be rather small... and the anime and the manga might have not bothered checking how big the 'mountain' of gold was supposed to be.

Also about 'Our Confession'.

Spoiler for Spoiler about Our Confession:

In Our Confession it was said the letter the servants' relative would receive were a bribe Beato paid them. As Ange also received such letter it seems logical to assume her parents too were bribed into acting in a certain way, while possibly being told it was all a mere game.

This could have caused Eva to believe they were really killing people and therefore make the truth she wrote in her diary as something that would depict them as culprits.

Though, on the other side, it's also possible they decided to take over the mystery game and commit murder for real, maybe because they didn't trusth Yasuda to keep her part of the deal or maybe because they also were tricked into believing someone else was planning to kill them when that person was merely playing a role.

She keeps an eye out for every single person, she establishes alibis for every single one. She does so to incriminate Nats. Its not just the parlor scene but also during the time of the first twilight and Hideyoshi's murder. If Kanon/Shannon weren't really there during those times then the author just hand waved a bunch of plot holes by using "Erika is an idiot huuuur"

You guys seem to think that just because the answer is not spoon-fed, reasoning is impossible.

That is not even mildly close to anything I've said. Can you please not patronize me? What I'm saying is that Erika should be smart enough to realize that her powers do not actually do what they say they do, OR she should be complaining about Kanon's absence in the parlor scene. There's no way around it.

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Therefore, Erika, whose perspective does not reach the level of Red Truth (even though it actually is still reliable), is obviously being tricked. She is not capable of fighting in a fair game against a witch. The witches are just cruelly taunting her, for no other reason than to alleviate their boredom.

But it is. Things that Erika observes are 100% certain. That's literally Red Truth-level, and Lambdadelta said so herself.

And if the witches are just fucking with Erika, and she can't hope to win, then why in the fuck is she an antagonist? Why is Battler HELPING to bully her? Why is everyone being a jackass for no reason except to troll the readers and waste everyone's time?

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Humans were never told that their truths are correct. Does that mean they are being cruelly tricked? No. They can go around and experience the world with their senses, and decide what is the truth for themselves. Even so, their senses are not at the level of Red Truth.

What you're proposing is not at all equivalent to being given super-senses by omnipotent beings and being told that what you perceive is true. There is a difference between being merely ignorant and having God himself tell you that you are correct...and then having to suspect somehow that God is lying to you for no reason except he's a bored asshole.

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That is how it is with Erika's Piece in the Mystery side of the story, according to my theory.

Your theory does not fit the facts, and requires everyone to be an asshole to Erika, including the good guys.

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In the end, what we are all looking for in this story is "an answer we can be satisfied with." Whether Ryukishi gives us this answer or not, it doesn't change that this is our objective. And it doesn't change the fact that we are capable of reaching this objective. I believe I will reach that objective, myself. Do you?

Utterly and entirely irrelevant to addressing the plot hole being discussed.

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I don't get why Erika can't make the mistake of not making sure behind her there's really Shannon and Kumasawa and Kanon is really where Battler says he was.

Despite being intelligent she overlooked checking things more than once in Umineko so missing to check is an error she's prone to do.

She purposefully went out of her way to gather EVERYONE together in one room so she could announce her theory. She would notice if someone was missing.

...I've only been repeating things that have been stated over and over throughout Umineko, whether it be the novels or Tsubasa. That's why I think it is close to the truth. However, I acknowledge that there can be holes.

Alright. Then in that case, I'll adjust my theory to match that. Everything Piece Erika observes, is 100% certain. It is at the level of Red Truth.

Therefore, that which she does not observe, or does not pay attention to, is not 100% certain. And since we were only shown the Fantasy side of that scene, then as far as we're concerned, anything could have happened on the Mystery side, within reason. So, my theory about staging a detective game instead of doing normal introductions is still valid.

Therefore, that which she does not observe, or does not pay attention to, is not 100% certain. And since we were only shown the Fantasy side of that scene, then as far as we're concerned, anything could have happened on the Mystery side, within reason. So, my theory about staging a detective game instead of doing normal introductions is still valid.

But Erika controls her Piece. She moves it around, makes it do things, and can even make moves without informing a Gamemaster. This implies that she can totally control and see through the senses of her character as if she WERE her character. So if that's the case, shouldn't Erika see things in the Parlor as they REALLY are? If Kanon's there, that causes some errors. If he's NOT there, why doesn't she speak up?

But Erika controls her Piece. She moves it around, makes it do things, and can even make moves without informing a Gamemaster. This implies that she can totally control and see through the senses of her character as if she WERE her character. So if that's the case, shouldn't Erika see things in the Parlor as they REALLY are? If Kanon's there, that causes some errors. If he's NOT there, why doesn't she speak up?

This is true. However, if her eyes are covered by a blindfold, then she is not observing anything visually until it is removed. That is, other than the blindfold itself, which she can confirm with 100% certainty is there.

Furthermore, while everything she does observe is not an illusion in any way, shape, or form, and is therefore 100% certain, it is not as though she wouldn't be able to mistake a real sound for a different sound if the two sounded similar.

She purposefully went out of her way to gather EVERYONE together in one room so she could announce her theory. She would notice if someone was missing.

Wait, you aren't talking of the parlour scene, right? Because in it she didn't purposely gather anyone nor had to announce a theory... or are you talking of another parlour scene that's not the one at the beginning?

Wait, you aren't talking of the parlour scene, right? Because in it she didn't purposely gather anyone nor had to announce a theory... or are you talking of another parlour scene that's not the one at the beginning?

The one were she goes and declares Natsuhi as the culprit. These types of denouements are usually done with everyone present.

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Originally Posted by Toku

This is true. However, if her eyes are covered by a blindfold, then she is not observing anything visually until it is removed. That is, other than the blindfold itself, which she can confirm with 100% certainty is there.

Furthermore, while everything she does observe is not an illusion in any way, shape, or form, and is therefore 100% certain, it is not as though she wouldn't be able to mistake a real sound for a different sound if the two sounded similar.

You are basically saying that the player has no ability to discern whats real or not and its all up to the whim of the witch? Then this isn't a game and the player shouldn't even try to challenge her.

You are basically saying that the player has no ability to discern whats real or not and its all up to the whim of the witch? Then this isn't a game and the player shouldn't even try to challenge her.

No ability? On the contrary, she has great hearing, great memory, etc. She's not incompetent.

However, even if what you are seeing is not an illusion at all, it's possible to mistake it for something similar.

If I ring two bells next to you, but both are similar enough that it's hard to tell that they are different, you might think that they are both the same type of bell. Even so, the fact remains that both of these bells are very real and your hearing is presenting you with perfectly accurate data of the noise around you.

@Toku
That doesn't excuse THREE different scenes where Erika should have noticed something off about Shannon and Kanon and yet did nothing about it.
1) The aforementioned parlor scene everyone's been discussing where everyone is supposedly there.
2) When Erika's trying to corner Natsuhi about Kinzo's dissappearance.
3) When Erika is accuses Natsuhi of the crime.

Because she was lied to by absolutely everyone. Why is this hard to understand? Beatrice at least was honest in her presentation of the format, if not the intention of her conversation with Battler. By your ideas, no one - Battler included, mind you - was ever honest to Erika. None of her powers were real; anything she did, she did because someone threw her a scrap and claimed it was her own doing when it clearly wasn't. The Logic Error was just another trick to convince her that she had any measure of control when in actual fact she didn't.

If Erika cannot even rely upon the perspective she's told she has and the abilities she has supposedly been given, then she existed solely to be manipulated and destroyed. She was of no use to Bernkastel from the start, she was no threat to Battler, and Lambdadelta screwed with her freely. And why did any of this happen? There was no reason. They did it for nothing but witches' cruelty, every single one of them.

No wonder she tried to take vengeance on them. They deserved it.

Whoa-za ... are you responding to a specific theory, or every one out there? Part of why I support Kanon having a body is that it means Erika's Mary-Sue powers worked EXACTLY as we were told, and she gets to still be as intelligent and anal retentive about details as we're told she is.

Of course, my theory DOES have Erika being mildly duped - it would mean Lambda made a fundamental change to the structure of the game unannounced, and !Battler reverted back to the original structure, similarly unannounced. I would not say, however, that either told her deliberate lies about their narratives ... er, beyond the degree that Beato did with any of her games, anyway.

ALSO, we've been discussing this parlor scene, but the last few posts made me realize that we may not all be talking about the same one. Most of my thinking concerned Erika'd denouement, wherein she deliberately gathered every living charater into the parlor with her. However, some of us seem to be talking about her introduction, where the "people in parlor now equals people on island" red was made.

I bring this up because I can maybe, MAYBE excuse Kanon being behind Godha at the introduction, where Erika was still playing the part of a mature, refined young lady, but I came to my own conclusion at the denouement where, despite the continuing lack of Erika's first-person descriptives, the presence of every human besides Kinzo, Hideyoshi, and Twilight was deliberate on the part of Erika herself, and typical of the type of denouement scene that's ... hm, traditional isn't the word I want to use - expected.

@Toku
That doesn't excuse THREE different scenes where Erika should have noticed something off about Shannon and Kanon and yet did nothing about it.
1) The aforementioned parlor scene everyone's been discussing where everyone is supposedly there.
2) When Erika's trying to corner Natsuhi about Kinzo's dissappearance.
3) When Erika is accuses Natsuhi of the crime.

#1 is what I've been talking about all this time. In an effort to find a suitable theory for it, I read through that specific scene in the sound novel again, and I did post one. However, the debate I'm currently in with Aura and Renall, is only related to one aspect of that theory.

My intention here, is not to create a theory which has absolutely 0 holes in it, and the reason for this is that I won't have a chance to go back and read through the novels again for quite some time. After all, the novels are all really long, and I'm a slow reader. And I'd need to at least go through all of EP5 again. That'd be the bare minimum. Even so, I wanted to try and come up with theories.

It would be difficult for me to respond to 2 and 3 as I am now. I can come up with a few theories for them (like for example, by pointing out the fact that everyone is not necessarily in the same place during those scenes), but it would be difficult to develop it to the point where it would be truly satisfactory. My memory is just too vague in regards to these scenes and related information.

2) When Erika's trying to corner Natsuhi about Kinzo's dissappearance.I'm almost positive, if you're talking about the scene where Dlanor is introduced, that there was not a single person who treated Kanon like he was there that everyone could see, he also held no important part in that scene as far as I'm aware, so while we may have seen Kanon, Erika could not and everything could still work out.

I don't remember the other scenes very well, it's been awhile since I've read Umineko, but I am sure every scene that contains both Kanon and Erika in it can make Kanon a completely irrelevant element of the entire scene, thus you could dismiss his presence and nothing changes.

EDIT: Or, Shannon being the irrelevant element and Kanon actually being acknowledged physically(which would mean a change in Yasu's disguise).

Thats the point, Erika clearly cares about the position of everyone and establishes alibis for them just so she can corner Natsuhi. These alibis rise to the the level of red truth for everyone other than the people in the first twilight, its the only reason why Battler was able to create the alternate truth.

If she had conveniently left out Kanon then Battler could have gone out in his desperate non Sorcerer form and said something like "Kanon was never accounted for in your theories! He could have committed the crimes! Natsuhi is innocent!"

I subscribe to the idea that Kanon was physically there, its the only way Erika doesn't come out as an idiot thats being played by everyone. Thats what "lack of love" means, because in this game, the only reason for Shkanon to exists is absent and yet they are there. Battler corrects this in EP6 and warns Erika to pay attention to the fantasy scenes and she didn't, because in her mind that was useless other than establishing probable motive. If she had actually paid attention to them, she could have figured out the Shkanon trick.